1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information display apparatus, which is equipped with a touch panel that works as an input device for a user interface, that controls the display of a so-called mouse pointer on a display screen on the basis of input information from the touch panel, a mobile information unit having the same function as the information display apparatus, a display control method and a display control program used therein.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, various kinds of mobile devices such as a cellular phone unit, a portable music player and a PDA (personal digital assistant) that are equipped with a touch panel or a touch pad (both of them are referred to as a touch panel hereinafter) have been commercially produced. In addition, various types of touch panels such as those of a resistive film type, a pressure sensitive type, an electrostatic capacitor detecting type, an ultrasonic surface acoustic wave detecting type, an acoustic pulse recognition type, a vibration detecting type, an infrared light shielding type, an image recognition type and an electrostatic sensor type have been developed or commercially produced. The above-mentioned various types of touch panels are representative examples, and many other types have been also proposed. Because these types of touch panels may be produced using existing technologies, detailed explanation about these existing technologies is omitted.
As another example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-347787 (See FIG. 1 thereof), a touch panel display apparatus, in which a pointer displayed on a display screen is controlled by the way the touch panel of the touch panel display apparatus is touched, has been disclosed. In other words, in the touch panel display apparatus described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-347787, the display of the pointer is controlled in such a way that the pointer is not displayed when the touched position of the touch panel belongs to the nondisplay area of the touch panel, and the pointer is displayed when the touched position of the touch panel belongs to the area other than the nondisplay area.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-128802 (See FIG. 7 thereof), a cellular phone unit in which a cursor displayed on a display screen is moved with the use of a pressure type pointing device that issues signals on the basis of a depressive force and a depressive direction.